00:00The bank holiday weekend and the half-term holiday are going to prove extremely busy
00:06in an awful lot of places. Let's start on the railways. There is, as is normal, the bank
00:13holiday engineering works which are going to cause problems on the East Coast Main Line
00:17because the line that links London with Yorkshire, North East England and Southern Scotland is
00:24actually blocked between York and North Allerton. That means rail replacement buses and journeys
00:31from Newcastle to London taking about two hours longer than normal. Across the Pennines there will
00:39be problems getting between Manchester and Leeds in a hurry because the normal line through Huddersfield
00:46is going to be blocked. More significantly, I think, is going to be the problems affecting
00:52the Great Western Line from London to Cardiff between Bristol Parkway and Newport through
00:59the Severn Tunnel. That whole line is going to be closed not just for the bank holiday weekend
01:06but right through to the 8th of June. Elsewhere there are problems with the links on the lines
01:13from London to Gatwick to Newton Airport and to Stansted. So please check the times and the stations that
01:21are going to be able to take you to and from those airports. On the subject of aviation, well the
01:28main
01:29problem I think people may find is on the entry exit system for the EU and that's simply because,
01:37well, right across Europe we are seeing that the system which was rolled out six weeks ago simply
01:43isn't working as it should. Be prepared to give the four fingers from your right hand and a facial
01:49biometric but who knows if you will be asked for that on multiple occasions or not at all. There is
01:55simply no certainty it is European frontier roulette. The same applies at the places in the UK with
02:02juxtaposed border controls where French police of frontier are there to check your passport while
02:10you're still on British soil. That's the port of Dover, the Eurotunnel terminal at Folkestone and also London,
02:18St Pancras International, the home of Eurostar. In particular I'm looking at possible problems in
02:25Kent because the Kent Medway Resilience Forum is saying that Operation Rock on the M20 is going to
02:32be in force to try to avoid gridlock in Kent towns. Looking at the roads, it's going to be busiest,
02:40I think, on Friday evening, Saturday in the middle of the day. Sunday actually surprisingly busy and
02:48because there's 10 matches in the Premier League, the last games of the season, they're all kicking
02:53off at four o'clock. That's going to add to lots of day tripper traffic and of course coming back
02:58from
02:59those holiday destinations on Monday is going to be busy. The key problems are the western side of the
03:06M25 as usual, parts of the M1, the A303 which takes Londoners to Devon and Cornwall. Going north,
03:16the M6 heading towards and coming back from the Lake District and also Blackpool and other resorts.
Comments